JUST LOOK AT HER FACE! THERE IS NOTHING ADORABLE ABOUT IT!
How do you think Twitter reacted to the recently released trailer of the Will Smith-produced Annie remake? Pretty much as you’d expect…
Movie studio capitulates to Christians who complained about “historical inaccuracies” in Noah, a film about a man who fit all the animals ever into a single boat, sans provisions, and lived
"God, why did you create so many fucking idiots?"
Given that I also write for The Onion, I feel I should point out that this article is not from The Onion. But if we were better people — did less of that awful sinning against the Lord and stuff — we could live in a world where it would be.
Jeff Goldstein stepped up his game, taken 110 percent to the next level
Mere mortals bleg for money on occasion — and only in the direst of straits — but Jeff Goldstein does it every month, so he can handle the pressure. He’s been here before.
This month, however, he’s turned it up to eleven, and needs you to answer his call so he can hit it on all cylinders, because now he wants you to buy him a house.
The man is just putting on a clinic, I tell you, and he needs you to peak at his right time. He has a chance to do something special here, in terms of representing for the fiscally responsible.
I just hope he’s up to the task, because when it comes to payoffs, anything can happen.
Lucky for him, though, it doesn’t matter whether he wins or loses — he’ll go home.
Me on what Spike Jonze teaches us about him in Her
My new “Internet Film School” column is up. Sample:
Typically, romances rely on a small stable of predictable-but-effective techniques that convince the audience it’s witnessing the first, chemical blush of fresh love.
The most basic of these techniques is the two-shot, in which the director places both prospective lovers in the same frame. A series of two-shots, stacked one after the other, has a cumulative effect on the audience, which begins to expect to see these two characters together in every shot. After a while, shots that only contain one of the lovers will strike the audience as oddly empty, even if the sole lover in it is centrally framed in a way that would make it impossible for the other to be in the shot. By manipulating audience expectations in this way, the missing lover becomes an absent-presence in the film, something the audience wants to see. If the director only includes one lover in shots for an extended period of time, the audience will begin to feel that something is “wrong,” because the director is confounding the expectation he or she created. When the director relents and fulfills that expectation with a two-shot of the lovers reunited, the frame suddenly seems somehow more “correct” to the audience.
The problem Jonze faced in directing Her becomes obvious…
At least he knows who’s more important
GUY AT SEK’S DOOR: Hey friend, it’s windy, ain’t it?
SEK: I guess.
GUY AT SEK’S DOOR: Mind if I park in your driveway?
SEK: A little. I might need to use it.
GUY AT SEK’S DOOR: Thanks, I’ll just be a while.
SEK: I didn’t say “Yes.”
GUY AT SEK’S DOOR: You want me to park in the street?
SEK: It’s not a heavily trafficked road.
GUY AT SEK’S DOOR: It’ll just be a while. I won’t block you in.
SEK: You will, in fact, be blocking me in. And what happens when my wife gets home?
GUY AT SEK’S DOOR: Can’t she park on the street?
The head SEK doesn’t have explodes.
Finis.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and interracial families in America
While at The Raw Story retreat last weekend in San Francisco, my colleague Arturo Garcia and I had a long conversation about the show that went something like this…
I am become famous, destroyer of worlds…
(this is another guest post from Steven Attewell of Race for the Iron Throne, the LGM podcast, and the comment threads)
So…who knew you could get paid for writing about this stuff? Don’t worry, I don’t intend to forget all the people who got me to where I am today…they shall be the first targets of my intricately-planned revenge.
New Internet Film School post at the AV Club…
…and I know I’m slacking here, well aware of the fact, plan to rectify it, etc. etc. etc. But you can read what I have written over here. No lasers, but will arrows suffice?
“Dear the Doctor, if you can read this tweet…”
I may have enjoyed writing this piece too much, for obvious reasons. But it also works as a nice excuse to rejoin the LG&M community. I mean, if you don’t love me for Who-related scientific blather, why would you love me at all?
I could tell you long boring stories about why I haven’t been around as much as I ought to be, but it’s really because I’m The Office Jew and it was Christmas, so I picked up ALL THE SHIFTS.
More from me soon, as soon as I finish recuperating from drunken revelry with Brockington in the Big Easy.
Is it Festivus yet? Because I have some grievances to air.
Some days I find the perfect stock photography to accompany a story, and I think to myself, “SEK, what you published at 9:56 a.m. is awesome. You cropped that perfectly and rule.”
Then later that day, someone at a more heavily trafficked site finds the exact same perfect stock photography to accompany the exact same story, except this person crops improperly, so I think to myself, “SEK, what she published at 1:17 p.m. is not awesome. She cropped that terribly, failed to link to your article and does not rule.”
But then I remember that that is how cookies crumble on the Internet, and that I am a cookie and other people are monsters, so I think to myself, “SEK, who are you to complain?”
Let’s get cyn-i-cal, cyn-i-cal!
Some suggestions for getting into the Thanksgiving spirit:
- Cut in line, and when someone complains, claim you were there first.
- Walk into someone’s yard, plant a flag in it, and yell “No flag no country!” repeatedly.
- Engage in wanton acts of criminal trespass, and respond to all questions by saying that you wouldn’t be there if God didn’t want you to be.
- Ask for handouts, praise Christian charity, then bemoan socialism.
- Lecture everyone about preterition, then tell them not to worry, Hell’s not really that bad.
Feel free to contribute to the “festivities.” Here’s a little something to set the mood:
